Dr. Osheroff says that career development should begin as soon as students arrive at college, not in their final year, because early engagement helps them build confidence, find opportunities, and avoid missing out on internships or other high-impact experiences.

He explains that his office at the University of Southern Maine uses peer career guides to create a low-pressure first step for students who may be hesitant to meet with a professional advisor.

Dr. Osheroff notes that the peer career guide model works because students connect more easily with near peers who are still figuring things out, and because empathy is essential to effective peer advising.

He says the program includes training, ongoing development, and employer-led sessions so students can learn what the job market values and share that insight with others.

He emphasizes that internships should be more accessible, not just highly competitive summer opportunities, and says his team runs the program three times a year to create more entry points.

He describes a process in which his team handles student recruitment, screening, interview coaching, and employer matching, making the internship process easier for both students and employers.

He says spreading internships across fall, spring, and summer reduces competition and helps students fit part-time internships around their classes.

He explains that the program grew because USM invested in it over time and was able to show that it improved student retention, classroom success, and post-graduation outcomes.

He says paid internships are essential for equity because many students are commuters, work part-time, and have rent, childcare, or other financial responsibilities.

Dr. Osheroff explains that funding comes from grants and cost-sharing with employers, with each partner’s share varying by organization size and other factors.

He says the goal is to create meaningful, project-based internships rather than busywork, and his team helps employers design stronger roles from the start.

He notes that each internship begins with a learning agreement and three student-set learning outcomes, followed by midpoint check-ins to address issues before the internship ends.

He tells listeners that the team measures outcomes through surveys, resume support, and longer-term follow-up with alumni to see where participants go afterward and how the experience shaped them.

His main message is simple: if an idea is useful, start small, try it, and let it grow in your own context.

Our guest for this episode of College & Career Readiness Radio is Dr. Mark Covelle, Administrative Director of Middle Bucks Institute of Technology and a Founding Member of the CTE Collective.

Mark says that interest in CTE has surged post-COVID because hands-on, authentic learning could not be replicated online. The skilled trades gap has added further momentum nationally.

He notes that in CTE, students practice — they work on real brakes, deploy real safety equipment, and build real things. Traditional classrooms more often ask students to pretend. Kids know the difference, and it affects their engagement.

His school serves 1,000 students across 21 career programs and issued over 1,500 industry-recognized credentials last year — roughly 1.5 per student. These credentials are portable, tangible evidence of skill beyond a transcript.

Business and industry partners tell Mark the biggest gaps in young workers are persistence (stalling when stuck), communication, and general professionalism. MBIT grades students on employability weekly — resumes, interviewing, professional conduct, and workplace interaction are all part of the curriculum.

Mark believes that every K-12 school should have an internship program. Students need professional feedback at 18, not 24. Even virtual or industry-problem-based experiences count. Getting that feedback earlier — with educator support — changes outcomes.

Mark and TJ discuss how authentic problems can live in any classroom. An English problem-solution paper can be drawn from a real local business challenge. A student who needs math to complete an engineering project will learn that math. Purpose drives motivation.

Mark tells a story about involving students in school branding. MBIT's "ambition" identity came from a student who noticed MBIT sits inside the word ambition. It became a neon lobby sign, a podcast, and a school-wide hashtag — and it stuck because students created it.

Mark's closing message: authenticity matters. Authentic learning builds trust, persistence, and a positive relationship with school — the skills employers say are missing most.

College & Career Readiness Radio is brought to you by MaiaLearning, a fully comprehensive college and career readiness platform serving students worldwide.

Our guest for this episode of College & Career Readiness Radio is fourth-generation educator, coach, and multiple-time best-selling author Chip Baker. Chip is the creator of The Success Chronicles, a YouTube channel and podcast where he interviews people from all walks of life about what it truly takes to be successful in life. Drawing from thousands of these conversations, Chip and host Dr. TJ Vari connect the dots between post-secondary success and the skills, mindsets, and experiences students need for college and career readiness worldwide.​

After years of interviewing high performers, Chip identifies a core throughline: the ability to overcome adversity and “grow through, not go through” tough times. He argues that on the other side of our hardest challenges is our maximum growth, and that educators play a pivotal role in helping students develop resilience and perseverance. For Chip, relevance is key—students engage and persist when learning is tied to real-world applications, pathways, projects, internships, and work-based learning that clearly connect to their futures.​

Chip highlights the quiet but powerful impact of educators, counselors, and support staff who consistently show up with care, presence, and high expectations. These adults build quality relationships, provide relevance, and communicate, “I really care about your success,” which Chip sees as the foundation for student growth and long-term achievement. He notes that many successful people attribute their progress to someone who poured into them when they doubted themselves, or to their own decision to “be the one” who changes the trajectory of their family through education, learning, and new environments.​

From The Success Chronicles, Chip distills recurring traits of successful people: resilience, self-belief (“you are enough”), strong support systems, core principles, lifelong learning, time management, self-awareness, reflection, and intentional goal setting. He emphasizes that learning is not optional, and that managing time—saying no to what doesn’t matter so you can say yes to what does—is essential for sustained success. These traits align directly with many districts’ portraits of a graduate and provide research-informed guidance for the skills schools can intentionally teach and assess.​

Chip shares powerful quotes and themes from his guests such as “failures are fuel for success,” “consistency is the truest measure of performance,” and “don’t let your life be driven by your to-do list—let it be driven by your to-be list.” He uses these ideas with students, helping them “conquer themselves” by understanding their triggers, interests, and values so they can eliminate distractions and build a life aligned with who they are.

Explaining why he started The Success Chronicles, Chip says he simply wanted to serve, give, and stop “keeping to himself” the powerful conversations that had expedited his own growth. He loves highlighting unsung heroes who do the work without seeking recognition and believes “success leaves clues” that students and educators can use in their own journeys. His closing message to educators is his personal tagline: “Live, learn, serve, inspire—go get it."

Listeners can find on YouTube and on all major podcast platforms, and explore his more than 30 books, merch, and resources through links in his social media bios or by searching his name on Amazon.

Our guest for this episode of College & Career Readiness Radio is best-selling author of Careers By the People, Mike Wysocki.

Mike Wysocki discusses how his own career path shaped his focus on career readiness. As a first-generation, low-income student, his early goal was simply to go to college and get a job in business. After graduating, he found the experience underwhelming and unfulfilling. Even when he later moved into well-paid tech sales in Los Angeles, the work felt unchallenging and disconnected from his interests. That realization led him to ask others about their careers, which ultimately inspired his book Careers by the People, featuring candid advice from more than 100 professionals.

Through his research and speaking with students, Wysocki has found that many young people remain confused about career paths, particularly outside elite universities. He believes the connection between education and the workforce is often weak, with students lacking awareness of industries, networking strategies, and professional tools like LinkedIn.

Wysocki pushes back on the idea that students should simply follow passion or talent alone. Instead, he encourages students to identify industries that genuinely interest them and then apply their strengths within those fields. Building a network within an industry makes it easier to move between roles such as sales, operations, or marketing while maintaining connections and credibility.

A key piece of his advice is for students to speak directly with experienced professionals. Conversations with people who have spent years in a field—and especially those who have left it—provide more realistic insight than relying on peers or family members alone. Hearing multiple perspectives helps students better understand the pros and cons of different careers.

Wysocki also emphasizes that many students only know careers within their family networks, which can limit awareness of other opportunities. Expanding exposure to different industries earlier in life can help students discover options that better match their interests.

Reflecting on his own experience, Wysocki says college was valuable because it helped him build writing skills, confidence, and broader knowledge. He believes higher education can be transformative, particularly for students from working-class backgrounds, but students must also use that time to actively explore careers and build professional connections.

His upcoming book examines how current college students prepare for the workforce, using detailed questionnaires with students from state universities across the United States. The goal is to better understand their career thinking, preparation strategies, and the gaps that still exist between college and the workplace.

Wysocki encourages educators to leverage alumni networks and retired professionals when helping students explore careers. Alumni can share practical experience, while retirees often feel freer to speak candidly about the realities of their industries.

This episode of College & Career Readiness Radio features our guest Patrick Jones, an experienced educator, business leader, and expert in career readiness.

Patrick argues that the “internship shortage” is really a systems problem rooted in how higher education and K-12 interface with employers, not a lack of student interest or talent. He explains the friction employers face—especially smaller organizations—when trying to work with colleges, and calls for more employer-friendly structures, incentives, and even intermediaries that can broker relationships at scale.

Patrick emphasizes that today’s students often arrive at college with less work experience and limited exposure to the full range of roles in industries they care about. He shares examples of helping students see beyond the obvious job titles (like “athlete”) to the many supporting careers in areas such as sports marketing, finance, operations, and analytics, and stresses the importance of discovery experiences that broaden their sense of what’s possible.

He also makes a compelling case that any internship is better than no internship, because the biggest barrier is access, not perfection. Even imperfect or loosely structured internships can teach punctuality, communication, hierarchy, feedback, and “managing up,” especially when paired with reflection and guidance from an advisor or faculty member.

Patrick introduces his Discover–Ready–Find framework, the focus of his forthcoming book. Discover helps students understand how the labor market really works and why relying only on degrees and GPAs is risky. Ready reframes college as a platform for building emotional maturity, durable skills, and early work experience, starting as early as the first year. Find helps students develop a career “taste palette,” so they can intentionally seek environments and roles that fit who they are, rather than taking the first offer by default.

Throughout the conversation, Patrick returns to one central theme: students don’t just need more programs—they need caring adults and well-designed systems of support that prepare them for the realities of work. His message to educators is clear: build real relationships, create more on-ramps to authentic work experiences, and help young people connect their education to opportunity with purpose.

This episode of College and Career Readiness Radio features Kim Gameroz, founder of Teaching Inside Out and SELbrate Good Times.

Kim defines SEL as intentionally teaching students how the social world works so they can function successfully in life and work, rather than assuming they already possess these skills. She emphasizes cognitive flexibility (shifting when things do not go a student’s way), emotional intelligence (accurately identifying emotions and using strategies like mood meters and zones of regulation), perspective taking (jumping into the mind of another person, character, or historical figure), and executive functioning (goal setting, planning, and adapting plans) as core elements educators must actively teach.​

For classroom practice, Kim urges educators to embed SEL into daily systems and routines instead of treating it as an add-on program. She describes an intentional feelings check-in that always pairs “How are you feeling?” with “What tool will you use to support yourself right now?” so students build a toolbox of self-regulation strategies and then reflect later on whether those tools actually helped.​

Kim stresses that the real “solution” begins with the adult: SEL is not about fixing kids, but about educators making a mindset shift toward teaching lagging skills rather than punishing behavior. She challenges teachers, counselors, and leaders to be intentional in their responses, avoid explosive reactions, and recognize that they are not meant to do this work alone; instead, they should “find their herd” of like-minded colleagues who believe SEL must be taught, not assumed.​

Drawing from her upcoming book, Becoming the BISON, Kim uses the bison metaphor to describe educators who “run into the storm” together rather than avoiding hard situations like challenging behaviors, difficult parent emails, and classroom chaos. Bison represent being intentional so others notice—choosing actions that create a sense of calm, unity, and growth mindset for students, and modeling cognitive flexibility and emotional regulation during inevitable storms.​

Kim offers concrete modeling moves for elementary classrooms, such as “mental dress rehearsals” of transitions where students act out expectations with their hands before moving their bodies. She frontloads potential problems (e.g., what to do if someone takes your spot) and explicitly teaches flexible responses, then uses calm prompts like “Was that part of your path?” to coach outliers toward expectations rather than relying on punishment.​

For secondary students, Kim adapts the same rehearsal idea to executive functioning and future planning. She suggests guiding students through visualizations of going home, managing after-school schedules, and deciding when and how they will study or complete assignments, helping them mentally sequence steps and adjust plans when life “storms” disrupt the day.​

Kim explicitly connects these SEL competencies—emotional intelligence, planning, organization, cognitive flexibility, and co-regulation—to college and career readiness as durable, transferable skills. She notes that adult life requires constantly shifting plans, regulating emotions under stress (from broken pipes to workplace conflicts), and working productively with people who may be difficult, all of which mirror the SEL work students must practice in school.​

Her closing message to educators is clear: “Teach social and emotional skills, don’t expect them.” When a student’s behavior is frustrating, she encourages adults to ask, “What skill is lagging?” and remember that “kids do well if they can,” shifting from blame to instruction and from expectation to intentional teaching.

Our guest for this episode of College & Career Readiness Radio is Brian Johnson.

Brian explains why simply “placing kids” isn’t enough and why districts must define clear quality criteria so work-based learning experiences are aligned, mentored, and meaningful.

He shares the six basic characteristics he uses to vet opportunities: minimum hours, alignment to a student’s pathway of study, a professional mentor/supervisor, a real-world environment, student interest, and space for students to discover what they don’t want.

Brian describes his student intake process, where he learns about each student’s pathway, interests, dislikes, and dream organizations and uses that to co‑design potential placements.

He has students spend two weeks actively using their own networks—family, neighbors, community—to try to find a placement, teaching them that finding a job is a skill and giving them “skin in the game.”

Brian notes that 50–60% of students typically find their own placements, and then he steps in to formalize details with partners and ensure the experience meets district criteria.

He talks about preparing and coaching industry partners, including helping them understand the developmental realities of working with teenagers and why their feedback is so powerful.

Brian outlines a clear termination process: partners coach first, but if performance doesn’t improve, they are encouraged to end the placement just as they would in real life.

He emphasizes that termination should be a learning experience, not the end of the road, and he builds in a redemption process so students can reflect, get coaching, and try again.

In the redemption phase, students must fully own the search for their next experience, while Brian commits to supporting them (including making calls alongside them if they struggle to find something).

He explains how he creates “competitive opportunities” where students must apply and interview, even if there are enough slots, so they feel pressure, practice competing, and learn to handle rejection.

Brian shares how he uses “rejection therapy” and real examples (like a student losing an opportunity after signaling wrestling was a higher priority) to help students understand professional expectations.

He contrasts asking for unpaid favors from industry with offering a “menu” of ways to partner—career fairs, speaking in classes, mentoring, hosting interns, hybrid options—to make participation realistic.

Brian cautions that relying on philanthropy alone is not sustainable and urges coordinators to approach this work more like relationship‑based sales that respect a business’s needs and constraints.

He calls for advisory boards and partners who truly bring value and ideas to the table instead of just “checking the box” of attendance.

Brian explains why work-based learning must be part of a district’s DNA, not a last‑minute add‑on in 11th or 12th grade, and why culture and expectations have to be built over time.

He describes “curiosity fairs” for pre‑K–4, where students dress as what they want to be and meet real professionals from those fields, alongside more traditional career fairs in grades 5 and 7.

He emphasizes using parents and families as the first and strongest partner network in elementary schools, inviting them in as speakers and role models from all kinds of jobs.

He encourages schools to think less about hitting home runs and more about consistent exposure so students don’t reach senior year with no idea what they want to do.

Brian’s closing message is that educators should stop trying to control everything: they should own the systems and supports, but students must own their journeys, their effort, and their outcomes.

Our guest for this episode of College & Career Readiness Radio is Jan Jardine.

Jan Jardine explains how work-based learning helps students connect classroom learning with real-world careers through internships, apprenticeships, and CAPS-style industry projects, often revealing both what students love and what is not a good fit before they invest in postsecondary education.

She describes how CAPS programs “bring industry to students” by embedding them in professional environments where they work in teams on authentic client projects, practicing skills like communication, project management, and handling iterative feedback instead of just observing adults at work.

She emphasizes the importance of starting career-connected learning earlier, moving beyond a 9–12 or “just CTE” model by integrating projects and industry connections into middle school courses like College and Career Awareness and even elementary-level career exploration, so students do not “meander” through pathways without direction.

Jan also pushes for breaking down silos between core academics and CTE, sharing examples of engineering students who independently applied calculus to design a moving staircase prototype, illustrating how interdisciplinary, project-based work makes academic content meaningful.​

For rural and under-resourced communities, Jan urges educators to treat the school system itself as an industry partner—leveraging child nutrition, IT, transportation, HR, and other internal departments, as well as nearby community colleges, to create rich work-based learning experiences even where external employers are scarce.

She reflects on the 2025 ACTE CareerTech Vision conference (in New Orleans this year), noting growing national momentum: more conference sessions on rural innovation, younger grades, and postsecondary collaboration.

Jan highlights the upcoming National Work-Based Learning Conference in Rhode Island (April 29–May 1), where sessions will range from foundations for new coordinators to advanced topics for experienced leaders looking to “level up” their programs, with special attention to business partner engagement and rural models.

She also shares details about the ACTE-sponsored Leadership Alliance for Work-Based Learning, a new cohort for 10 practitioners that includes in-person learning at the conference, five virtual sessions, and a capstone project to be presented at the 2027 conference, designed to help leaders tackle real challenges in their own contexts.​

Her call to action for educators is simple but powerful: share your story—do not assume your work is “no big deal,” because when you consistently tell students’ success stories, communities, industry partners, and policymakers better understand the impact and begin to advocate for and invest in this work.